Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late-coming-of-age, female empowerment drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry topped the prizes at the Swiss Film Awards in Zurich over the weekend.
The drama, which world premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last year, revolves around an independently minded, single woman in her 40s in a small Georgian village, who faces a personal crossroads when she unexpectedly falls in love.
The feature won Best Feature Film, as well as Best Screenplay and for Best Screenplay for Naveriani and for Best Film Editing for Aurora Franco Vögeli.
The Swiss-Georgian co-production was produced by Thomas Reichlin, Ketie Danelia and Bettina Brokemper for Alva Film in Switzerland and Takes Film in Georgia.
Pierre Monnard’s clandestine fight club drama Bisons also won three prizes: Best Film Score for Nicolas Rabaeus, Best Cinematography for Joseph Areddy and Best Actor for Karim Barras.
Swiss-French Barras will also soon be seen in period drama Winter Palace, which Pierre Monnard directed for Swiss public broadcaster RTS and Netflix.
Ella Rumpf won Best Actress for her performance as a brilliant mathematician who strays from her academic path in Marguerite’s Theorem.
Rumpf was previously feted for her performance in this role in France with the Most Promising Actress prize at the 2023 Lumière awards and Best Female Discover at the 2024 Césars.
Maud Wyler won the award for Best Supporting Actress in the French-Swiss coproduction The Path Of Excellence by Frédéric Mermoud.
In other prizes, Lisa Gerig’s The Hearing, re-staging the interviews of four people whose applications for asylum in Switzerland were rejected, won Best Documentary.
The work premiered at CPH:DOX last year and also went to play at Hot Docs in Toronto and the Sheffield DocFest.
Best Animation went to Élodie Dermange’s short work Armat in which the filmmaker attempts to find out more about her Armenian origins through interviews with her family.
The award for Best Sound went to Xavier Lavorel for Italian-Swiss-French co-production La Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher, involving Switzerland’s Amka Films Productions.